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Monday, October 3, 2016

Darlings, I'm here to tell you about my latest 'thing' as I keep mysteriously calling it when talking to friends. Only Rob and a couple of close friends have taken a look but I want to share it with you today. I'm nervous, I'll admit it. Remember last week, I was talking about experiencing new things, and devoting 15 minutes a day to whatever it is you're hoping to learn about or try. Well, I've long been wanting to try a new blog format and this past week I've put a new blog together. It's called, Transactions with Beauty. It's going to be a lot like Calm Things but will be in smaller posts, more frequently. Right now I'm aiming for three posts per week, but it's going to be flexible.

Of course, right now it's very much a work in progress, so thanks for bearing with me while I figure out how the new site and template work.

You can subscribe, or just check in when you have time. Check out the menu in the top left hand corner and peruse the posts from this past week. As a regular reader of CT, some of it will seem familiar. But I hope, as the weeks go on, to create a lot of uplifting new content. Wish me luck, and stay tuned. Thank you for all your comments and love for Calm Things over the years. I think you'll see that the spirit of it will continue in this latest endeavour.

Much love and thanks,
Shawna

ps. I'll be making a Facebook and Twitter page this morning (stay tuned) for TWB which you'll be able to find and follow by clicking on the icons in the top right hand corner.

Monday, September 26, 2016

"And roses. Always the roses. You love roses, don't you?""I do. I bought roses for Donna, my wife, and they're on the counter now and dying. They're the most magnificent things, even when they're dying. They just get more and more beautiful. The edges are kind of rotting, and there is something so gorgeous about them."

- Li-Young Lee in conversation with Marie Jordan

So this past week I read an article on what is, as you know by now, one of my favourite go-to places on the web, On Being. It's titled, A Hundredth Part of the Day and is by Paul Elie. It made an impression on me partly because he's saying things I've been thinking about but haven't really articulated even for myself. For me it's very encouraging to think of doing things in terms of experience rather than achievement.

Fifteen minutes is a hundredth part of a day, just about. (It is 1/96th.) Andy Warhol made 15 minutes proverbial, the pop culture equivalent of a flash of light in a steel cooking pan. For statisticians it is a rounding error, a difference that makes no difference. But for me, to spend a hundredth part of a day in the woods has made all the difference.

and then

Malcolm Gladwell has it (notoriously) that it takes 10,000 hours for a person to gain the mastery of a discipline that will set her apart from the crowd. Angela Duckworth has it (lately) that the character trait we ought to cultivate is grit — the stubborn stick-to-it-iveness that enables some people to set goals and achieve them while others do not.

There’s something to those formulas, but they are formulas for achievement, not experience. In the realm of experience, I’d suggest, a hundredth part of a day is decisive. Fifteen minutes. A hundredth part is the difference between doing something and not doing it. It’s the difference between an experience envisioned or postponed or never-dreamed-of and an actual experience, one that leaves you changed — initiated and ready for more.

In short, if there's something you want to attempt, then why not give it fifteen minutes a day? (At least to begin with?)

I still think Gladwell has it right, and I also like the idea that we ought to cultivate grit.

But this is a wonderful way to look at beginning something new, experiencing. Trying things.

Is there something you want to try? Something you've always wondered whether or not you could tackle?

I've decided to try a new project, and will keep you posted on it in the next couple of weeks. Not saying too much yet in case it turns out not to be 'the thing.'

These are the last of the late blooming roses from our yard. They didn't last long outside (in fact you see them in the first image on this post - in the bowl - all petals). So hard to let them go.

The soundtrack to this blog post might be:

(I wrote several books with that particular cd on in the background...)

Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
“even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

I can’t quite shake the astonishment. I can’t quite believe what my life keeps teaching me, that material existence is a thin veil thrown over a foundation of miracles so numerous and profound we almost invariably overlook them.

- Martha Beck

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and extraordinary ills that beset us”

- Charles Bukowski

We're still adjusting to being so-called empty nesters. I won't tell you it's not a huge adjustment, but it's going well because she's happy and having a brilliant time and working hard and all that. Still, there are odd bits: I find mealtimes SO STRANGE. We're a quiet enough family as it is, and now it seems extra quiet. Which is okay, you know?

The mealtime ritual is still there, of course. On the upside of it all is that I can cook whatever I like. Kale pesto for example.

One evening I had the craving for gin, yes gin. And something bitter. So I scavenged and made myself this drink from the bottoms of bottles, the last-ofs, etc. I scraped the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. We had a little cranberry juice, half a lemon, a dribble of Campari. Some gin, of course. And one can of Schweppes bitter lemon (which we sometimes pick up at the Italian Store - haven't seen it anywhere else).

And here is this fellow, who is probably getting more attention than he'd like, with Chloe out of the house.

Sometimes in the busy world one develops what we call the illness of being two-hearted... It is where you want to do and have the ability to do but you don't do, and you argue with yourself about it. Good to be of one mind, one heart, and to see the ifs, ands, buts, and possibilities only as thoughts, without attachment, keeping clear your goal of being all that you can be, understanding the Mystery, seeing the truth as it is. To see the essence of what is, to perceive the harmony and live it, is to accomplish the "good life."

- Dhyani Ywahoo

This is the first year I planted hollyhock seeds, and I'm very happy to have had a few come into bloom.

“No language is neutral. To speak is to claim a life—and often our own. If more Americans speak to one another, in writing, in media, at the supermarket, we might listen better. It is difficult, I think, to hate one another when we start to understand not only why and how we hurt, but also why and how we love.”

To seek out beauty in our work is to make a pilgrimage of our labors, to understand that the consummation of work lies not only in what we have done, but who we have become while accomplishing the task.

- David Whyte

And next, the plethora of photos from the walks I took this past week. Everything beginning to change, and me, Rilke's line echoing and repeating: you must change your life.

What to do with that?

The strange beauty of the suburbs, yes? Where even the 7-eleven can look rather lovely.

So here is a thing. In the utility corridor we came across what must be a pet burial? Why else would someone plant a bunch of flowers there? As I was snapping a few photos, Ace thought I must want him to pose, and so he went and sat right in front of the scene.

Have you listened to Leonard Cohen's latest, You Want It Darker? It's dark. It's incredible. From NPR:

For the past 25 years I've had this notion that on every successive Leonard Cohen record his voice would get deeper and deeper until one day he'd put out an album so subsonic that you'd just feel it, not hear it. Well, we're close. On this day, Leonard Cohen's 82nd birthday, he's given us a gift: It's dark, it's beautiful and it's deep. "You Want It Darker" is the title track to his soon-to-be-released album, his 14th studio album in his 49-year recording career. The album of nine songs, out Oct. 21, is produced by his son, musician Adam Cohen. As I hear it, the song speaks of a world without hope.

"A million candles burning
for the love that never came.
You want it darker
we kill the flame."

Darlings, that's all for this week. Know that I'm wishing you all calm things. xo